HOW many more climate change warnings do we need?

Already, Pembrokeshire is feeling the effects and forking out money: exceptionally wild weather events and sea level rise threaten the Newgale beach road, and now Little Haven faces a blunt choice: either sea defences are strengthened, or the village suffers storm damage.

What’s more, many other coastal communities in this county are at risk.

Now comes confirmation that the ocean’s fundamental life systems are under threat, as levels of dissolved carbon dioxide increase.

A Science magazine report published today (July 3) concludes that even if we limit global warming to an average temperature rise of 2 degrees C (which is unlikely), many ecosystems will be irreparably damaged. For a coastal county, this isn’t some abstract postulation but a blunt warning not just of wide scale biological destruction, but massive economic consequences – additional ones.

Science magazine’s editorial concludes, “In the history of humankind, there is a dearth of examples of global threats so far-reaching in their impact, so dire in their consequences, and considered so likely to occur that they have engaged all nations in risk mitigation. But now with climate change, we face a slowly escalating but long-enduring global threat to food supplies, health, ecosystem services, and the general viability of the planet to support a population of more than 7 billion people. The projected costs of addressing the problem grow with every year that we delay confronting it.”

A profligate lifestyle is what all the media push at us; but let us please stop and think of our children and grandchildren, before deciding if it really is desirable.

BLAISE BULLIMORE,

Deep Green Seas Marine Environmental Consultancy,

Tiers Cross

CHRISTOPHER JESSOP,

Independent Energy Consultant,

Marloes